(Editor’s note: Mark Noakes, a senior researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory who was explaining at the pavilion how 3D printing works, told Service Truck Magazine that only a few of the excavator’s components were actually 3D printed. They included parts of the cab and an arm of the boom.)

The AEM relays three things to keep in mind when looking at 3D printing and its potential for equipment manufacturing.

Enormous potential, but still evolving

The consensus right now among leading additive manufacturing experts is that the technology’s immediate potential can be most readily found in smaller-scale deployments, according to Dr. Lonnie Love, corporate research fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

“(3D printing) is not going to change all of manufacturing overnight,” Love says. “It’s not going to displace casting. It’s not going to displace welding.”

One key hurdle to adoption is that 3D printing is not yet fast enough, Love says.

“When you make these great parts at low volumes, you don’t care that it takes a week or a month … but we’ve got to go faster because it drives the productivity up and the costs down (for manufacturers).”

Does things never done before

Love and his colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory can attest to both the technology’s incredible capabilities and its value proposition for manufacturers.

Known as Project AME (Additive Manufactured Excavator), the excavator was 3D printed using a variety of machines to create and assemble three components: a cab, a boom, and a heat exchanger. The excavator’s boom was fabricated using a cutting-edge free-form additive manufacturing technique to print large-scale metal components.

It was an incredible undertaking, and the success of Project AME proved the sky’s really the limit in terms of what 3D-printing technology can do.

Creates efficiencies and save money

The costly and time-consuming process of tooling is a prime example of an opportunity for manufacturers to leverage 3D printing to create efficiencies.

According to Love, the production of molds, jigs and fixtures used in the mass production of heavy equipment can take months, run six-figure costs and very often involve tooling companies based overseas. However, Love says the widespread adoption of additive manufacturing could change all that.

“This may be a mechanism to rapidly get tooling back in the U.S., to make it take days and not months,” Love says. “It costs thousands instead of hundreds of thousands. We’ve already proven this on the automotive and aerospace sides. Now it’s time to take a look at construction and see where it fits.”

The equipment industry has earned a well-deserved reputation for designing and building machinery that stays in use for decades. But manufacturers spend heavily to keep massive inventories of spare parts on hand to meet customer needs.

According to Love, companies are now combating that challenge by cutting back on the overhead costs of warehouse space through 3D printing.

“The advantage of this technology is you could actually print a replacement part without having to have that inventory,” Love says. “That, to me, has tremendous potential.”

The Tech Experience returns to the next ConExpo in 2020. For more information, visit www.conexpoconagg.com.

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers has more than 950 member companies, including dozens of makers of service trucks and related accessories.

Editor’s note: The following is a lightly edited version of an article submitted by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.